Podcasts simply won't sync correctly between mac

and iPhone 6. They sync randomly. I get old episodes I've already played, and not the new ones I haven't played. I've followed every instruction on the apple support site, and it simply doesn't work. It's very frustrating. So I have to go back to using my five year old iPod to listen to podcasts, because it will actually sync the unplayed episodes from my mac when I connect it. I'd like to just carry the iPhone and not the podcast, but the software has made that impossible. I love the iPhone, but the podcasts app may be the worst piece of software I've ever encountered. Would be nice if Apple would fix it, but I've seen complaints about this all over the forums, and Apple seems uninterested in addressing the problem.

I've spent too long today trying to make it work. No use spending good time after bad. The software simply is a piece of.....you know. Too bad. Sadly, there don't seem to be many great alternatives out there.

How hard can it be to have a setting where your podcasts on your phone and mac simply sync to each other? Of course, that is what it says it does, but it doesn't even come close to actually doing that. I keep looking for some third party work around, but haven't found that either. Apple has long advertised that things "just work" right out of the box. That used to be true. I hope they get back to that.